How life’s greatest stressors affect the kids

If you google ‘stressful life events’ most of the results will mention death in the family, personal illness, marriage/divorce, change in or loss of employment, buying a house (or other large purchase) and having children.

For me, these things come in packs. The same day that I closed on my first house, I also purchased a new vehicle. Talk about money flying out the door. The month that Em and I got married we also closed on our house, I started work on another graduate degree and baseball season started so I was going to be spending countless hours on the field. It felt like we were an old married couple after just 30 days.

All of these things happened before we had kids. We were able to absorb the stress and just roll with it. We didn’t have to worry about how it affected others or what impact the stress had on the kid(s).

It’s funny, when we had kids we slowed down a little with our activities but we are still subject to the big life events listed earlier. Ok, we don’t have to worry about getting married/divorced or finding a place to live but the others are still out there. Abbi is starting to understand life (sure wish she’d teach me) and Adler can recognize when we are stressed, we have to try to handle it differently.

We recently had a death in the family. It was a surprise and resulted in some long hours at Albany Med and then the funeral and family gathering afterwards. The hospital was no place for 2 toddlers so they stayed with Gramma. Em was stressed to the max but the kids were in comfortable surroundings. No big deal right? Well, their routine got messed up and while they have no comprehension of death, they knew something was going on. We chose not to even discuss it with Abbi. Had she been a little older we would have had to figure out a way to explain it to her.

Even more recently, Em and I made a huge career decision and our wallets were the hardest hit. We spent countless nights after the kids were asleep discussing it, running the numbers, and going through the what-ifs. Directly, Abbi has no idea. She is happy to have Daddy home more. Fortunately, she is just as happy playing with her current (35 bazillion) toys and isn’t asking for something new every single second. The decision that we made was definitely the right one but isn’t sustainable for the long-term and it’s the long term effect that weighs heaviest.

Everyone knows someone that has kids and is dealing with their own personal illness. Thankfully, we are fairly healthy. Even if not life threatening, I can’t imagine having to sit down and tell a child that Momma or Daddy has to be in the hospital or just can’t play ball right now. Similarly, we probably all know of a situation where two people are getting divorced and the kids end up in the middle of some ugly circumstances.

Fortunately, kids are resilient especially when they are younger. However, it’s very apparent that while our kids can be easily distracted away from the stressor, they don’t forget. Abbi is a sponge and remembers everything – - often times things that Em and I have chosen to forget to reduce our own stress.

I’m going to add one more major stressor to the list – - keeping life’s stress away from the kids. It’s definitely not just about diapers and teething.

6 Responses

Little children need to be just that-little children with no worries more than the right snack in the kitchen cabinet. Do not discuss adult topics or personal situations in their presence because they take it all in and if certain topics disturb us, the damages to their lives can be devastating.

As an only child growing up I had huge stressors. My parents divorced when I was 2 and my mom remarried when I was 5. It definitely effected my personality and life.

I think it’s hard to know what to share with kids and what not to share. I think the main thing to keep in mind is that kids are not little morons; their brains are very active -more so than adults- and they are constantly absorbing new information. They know more about what’s going on than you think they do.

Even if the adults choose not to discuss these things, kids know. After age 3 and especially age 4 kids are just really aware of expressions and emotions of others. My oldest just turned 5 and already in his little life he has had to deal with a number of the situations mentioned in the OP like serious illnesses, death, change in jobs, so instead of hiding it and creating more stress for all, we have explained all of these things to him. The most important thing with these changes is to stress (no pun intended) that mommy and daddy are here, that we love him and always will and that won’t change.

Oh, we closed on our house 5 days before our wedding…most expensive week of my life. It wasn’t our choice but it worked out.

MBAMom is correct. Several studies (peer-reviewed, top notch medical journals) have found that, contrary to the commonly held belief, moderate to severe stress in a child’s early life (if coupled with adult involvement in learning to handle that stress) has a statistically significant improvement in that child’s success later in life. There was an inverted U shaped curve; kids that were kept from stress at a young age never developed coping skills, and kids that were in situations such as war and long term famine suffered from physicical and mental development delays that hindered them as adults. It makes sense if you think about it; none of the people that we admire as having made an impact on our world ever had happy-bunny-fairy childhoods.

“Tolerable stress refers to adverse experiences that are more intense but still relatively short-lived. Examples include the death of a loved one, a natural disaster, a frightening accident, and family disruptions such as separation or divorce. If a child has the support of a caring adult, tolerable stress can usually be overcome. In many cases, tolerable positive stress and benefit the child developmentally. However, if the child lacks adequate support, tolerable stress can become toxic and lead to longterm negative health effects.”

Kids are amazing sponges and constantly learning from all of these situations and our reactions. At almost 3, one of our pets passed away and it forced us into the conversation about death since he could no longer be with us. And a 3 year old will ask question after question after question until they feel like they understand. Unfortunately, many of those questions are fairly emotionless for a 3 year old because they just don’t understand death but they can be a loaded emotional question for the receiving adult. I chose to use the opportunity to not hide all my emotions and did end up with some tears in front of my daughter as we talked about the loss of our cat.

It is many months later and we still get the occasional question about our kitty. She was with me when I had to get a shot at the doctors and it had her far more worked up than me. In an effort to calm her down after the shot I said “mommies don’t cry”. And her response was… “but you cried about our kitty…?” And that’s when it really hit me she was trying to understand the emotional part of what happened, and my answer was “yes, the shot only hurts a little, but it is okay to cry when you miss someone or are sad.” I want to raise her to feel comfortable enough to express those emotions rather than hide them.

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